Tagged: upstart

VPC Speciality Lending Investments (LSE:VSL) has published a brief comment stating they have added investments in several direct lenders including OnDeck Capital, Funding Circle (USA), Upstart Network, Borro and Kreditech. VPC has also provided a balance sheet loan to Applied Data Finance. The company acquired these investments from private funds managed by the Company’s investment… Read More

Yesterday Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and U.S. Representative Tom Petri (R-WI) introduced a piece of legislation that stands to redefine the options on the table for students seeking to fund and finance higher education. The bill, entitled the Investing in Student Success Act, has some serious ramifications for crowdfunding platforms – such as Pave and Upstart –… Read More

Upstart was featured on CNBC recently in a video where founder Paul Gu spoke about the platform and their recent success. A young company called Upstart makes it possible to buy a share of someone’s future income. From the side of the upstart, as the company calls its fund-seeking clients, it’s a way to facilitate… Read More

In my years reporting on startups, I’ve often encountered stories of venture capitalists who’ve invested in a person, rather than a person’s idea. Hustle, an entrepreneurial spirit, a solid education, resolve, sheer likeability–often, these are qualities that seem to matter as much to investors as anything else. Something like this idea–that investors invest in people… Read More

Upstart, started by reformed Googlers, is a crowdfunding site that crowdfunds you with a slice of economic freedom. In their own words, Upstart aims to help you with the most important part of pursuing your dreams – taking the first step. It may be as simple as applying for an internship, relocating to another city,… Read More

… Let’s start with Kickstarter as the obvious crowdfunding example. The company was founded by three guys with no previous finance experience. The target return for investors who back development of new products — from objects to movies — on Kickstarter is … nothing. Backers are instead rewarded with early access or other in-kind rewards. Given these… Read More

Trina Spear, 29, graduated in 2011 with an MBA from an elite school and a hefty $170,000 in student loans. The debt was the reason she took a job in private equity rather than start her own company. “For someone coming out of Harvard Business School, people think you have every opportunity in the world… Read More

Sure, we all believe that youth must be served, but are you willing to invest in their future — literally? Crowdfunding platform Upstart, which launched in October, lets recent college graduates raise cash from online backers, who in return get a slice of their income for the next 10 years. The money is meant to… Read More

The start of Nathan Sharp’s story sounds familiar: In 2012, he found himself graduating from Dartmouth College with an MBA and $100,000 in student debt. But rather than take whatever job would help him make his monthly payments, the entrepreneurial-minded Sharp took $50,000 from backers using a start-up called Upstart — and agreed that in return… Read More

Like many early-stage entrepreneurs, Shefali Friesen poured all her personal savings into her start-up, a mobile service for adding bits of music evoking emotions to text messages. As she worked toward her graduate degree in music at New York University, Friesen felt neither the start-up nor the musician crowds really understood her vision. “If I’m… Read More

Upstart, a Silicon Valley startup led by Massachusetts native and former Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) executive Dave Girouard, has extended its crowdfunding site for young entrepreneurs to students and recent alumni of five Boston area universities. The Upstart site, which launched in August, allows entrepreneurs to raise funding in exchange for a share of their income… Read More

Is a college education a good investment? Warren Buffett has often quipped, before audiences of business-school students, that he would pay $100,000 for 10% of a student’s future earnings. One new website, Upstart (www.upstart.com), allows some of us to make a similar move. “Accredited investors”—generally, those who earned $200,000 or more in each of the… Read More

Former Google exec David Girouard’s Upstart wants to match promising, not-necessarily-techie college entrepreneurs with backers and mentors. The goal is to fuel the creation of a new generation of startups that would otherwise never see the light of day.